Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain - Softcover

Damasio, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156028719 ISBN 13: 9780156028714

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2003

Synopsis

The last in a trilogy of books that investigates the philosophical and scientific foundations of human life

Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and awe--these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza devoted much of his life's work examining how these emotions supported human survival, yet hundreds of years later the biological roots of what we feel remain a mystery. Leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasio--whose earlier books explore rational behavior and the notion of the self--rediscovers a man whose work ran counter to all the thinking of his day, pairing Spinoza's insights with his own innovative scientific research to help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.

About this title

Review:

Internationally renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says in Looking for Spinoza that "feelings of pain or pleasure or some quality in between are the bedrock of our minds." Feelings were considered to be beyond the competence of science, even by neuroscientists until very recently. Damasio has been in the vanguard of those who realised that the neurobiology of feelings was no less viable than that of vision or memory.

Damasio has found an historical figure he can identify with in the 17th-century philosopher Bento Spinoza--a Portuguese Jew living in Holland, who, without any of the benefits of neurobiological understanding, nevertheless did come to understand the unification of body and mind and the role of emotions in human survival and culture. As the title suggests, Looking for Spinoza, includes Damasio's personal exploration of what Spinoza achieved and his desire to bring this long forgotten hero of the mind back into view.

Damasio found himself coming face to face with patients with various kinds of localised brain damage. They could not feel particular emotions such as happiness or sadness in the way that they had been able to before the damage occurred. His was forced to conclude that different brain systems controlled different feelings. When patients lost the ability to express a certain emotion, they also lost the ability to experience the corresponding feeling. But the opposite was not true. Patients who had lost the ability to experience certain feelings could still express the corresponding emotion. Damasio had to ask himself whether emotion was born first and feeling second?

Looking for Spinoza is the third in Damasio's beautifully written trilogy (including Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens) that combine accounts of his personal professional explorations of the mind and what it means to be human and how our ideas about humanity have evolved through the philosophical tradition. What always comes across is his compassion and humanity whilst still being a very practical medical scientist trying to do his best for real people with very real problems. Damsio's account of his researches that have built on Spinoza's ideas, using the hard data of modern science is never less than fascinating and thought provoking. It's the sort of book that frequently makes the reader pause and look into space as the implications of what Damasio has written slowly sink in. The "sciency" bits are perfectly managable (aided by appropriate diagrams) for the general reader and there plenty of backup notes for those who want to explore further. --Douglas Palmer

Review:

"Damasio has the rare talent of rendering science intelligible while also being gifted in philosophy, literature and wit."
--Margaret Jacob "Los Angeles Times "

"Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."
--Ray Dolan "Nature "

"In clear, accessible and eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining a new vision of the human soul."
--William Kowinski "San Francisco Chronicle "

PRAISE FOR LOOKING FOR SPINOZA
"Clear, accessible and at times eloquent . . . Nothing less than a new vision of the human soul."-San Francisco Chronicle

"Compelling."-Scientific American

"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."-Nature

"Compelling."
--Scientific American

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0156028719
• ISBN 13: 9780156028714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368